Same Old Story With Benteke on the 2nd Anniversary of Selling Him on Ebay

Christian Benteke…will he stay or will he go now? Reading some of the recent press for the Benteke situation you can’t help feel a sense of deja vu from two years ago…just replace Liverpool with Spurs.

Christian Benteke Ebay Put up or Shut up

It’s been announced that Benteke has a release clause of £32.5 million, yet supposed lesser bids of around £20 million are being written about. Two years ago, Aston Villa set the transfer fee of £25 million as the marker they would consider entertaining selling the Belgian forward. It was simple: If a club offered £25 million they could start talks, if they offered less than £25 million, then they could bugger off.

Simple, right? Well, you’d have thought, but while the newspapers reported this £25 million mark themselves, it didn’t stop them subsequently reporting tosh such as ‘Spurs test water with £18 million bid’, followed days later by headlines such as “Spurs up bid to £20 million”. Then there was reports of players exchanges thrown into the mix and other BS.

Every day in that summer transfer window brought a new rumoured offer for Benteke.

According to Villa, they declared after they’d finally secured Benteke on a new contract, they had received no such offers from Spurs.

Because MOMS thought that £25 million price tag was a simple enough concept, we decided to put Christian Benteke on ebaywith a reserve of £25 million. It was a metaphoric statement on players that hand in transfer requests, media who regurgitate transfer rumour stories just for advertising clicks and also a message to opposition chairman.

‘Pay the £25 million reserve and you had yourself a Christian Benteke!’.

Lost in Translation

While various press picked up our ebay efforts in the UK, the football press in Italy really went crazy for the story with some of them getting a little lost in translation and seeming to think Aston Villa were actually using ebay to sell Benteke.

Selling players on ebay…that’s actually not a bad idea, when you come to think of it. At least supporters would really know what bids had been made. Also, you could probably get rid of agents, with ebay a more democratic and transparent way of selling players.

So if we put Benteke on ebay again in this transfer window to make a point to the press and any interested clubs, the reserve this time would match the release clause of £32.5 million.

Unless a newspaper is reporting a club has offered £32.5 million, don’t bother clicking on their link.

As well as making a satirical point two years ago, MOMS had a lot of fun with some of the questions that were asked by bidders in a very dry way, embracing the traditional types of ebay questions.

When ebay closed down our listing (the bidding was at the £1.5 million mark), luckily we saved the viewer question and answers in time from the listing. Click through to the next page to enjoy some of the highlights…